Celebrating Sonia and Robert Hamburger: Three Decades of Support for Chamber Music at UC San Diego

October 19, 2009

By Judy Piercey

For over three decades, Bob and Sonia Hamburger have supported chamber music at UC San Diego.

In 1976, University of California, San Diego faculty member and music lover Robert N. Hamburger, M.D.—after raising $1,000 from UCSD colleagues and the local community—presented one of the first classical music concerts on the new campus. For 33 years, the unwavering vision and support provided by Bob and his wife, Sonia, have been instrumental in growing a nascent program into the influential ArtPower! Chamber Music Series.

“Bob and Sonia played a huge role in creating and nurturing an arts community at UC San Diego, and it’s still true today,” said Martin Wollesen, ArtPower! Artistic Director and University Events Office Director. “Their fingerprints are on everything we do at ArtPower!.”

ArtPower! at UC San Diego engages diverse audiences through vibrant, multi-disciplinary performances by emerging and renowned international artists. Funded through student fees and private support, this season features approximately 60 events at six venues—from dance to film to classical music, including five chamber music concerts.

Bob Hamburger served as Assistant Dean at UC San Diego's School of Medicine.

A graduate of the University of North Carolina, Bob Hamburger was a P-38 pilot in the U.S. Army Air Force during World War II. After his military service, with Sonia and a little one in tow, he attended medical school at Yale University. After graduation, he worked at a hospital and then served as a Yale faculty member before being recruited to join the Biology Department at the newly established UC campus in La Jolla. In 1964, he was appointed by the UC San Diego Chancellor as Assistant Dean at the School of Medicine. Bob retired from the university in 1990, and was an attending professor at Rady Children’s Hospital, the UCSD Student-Run Free Clinic Project and the St. Vincent de Paul Clinic in San Diego. He is currently Professor Emeritus and active in the UC San Diego Emeriti Association.

Sonia Hamburger also left her mark on our young campus and in San Diego. She attended New York University and the University of Vermont until she moved with Bob to Yale. After putting higher education on hold to raise their family, Sonia attended San Diego State College part-time over several years. When UC San Diego’s John Muir College opened, she applied and was accepted, and developed her own major in Medical Anthropology with approval from the Academic Senate. After graduating in 1970 in the first Muir College class, she became a medical educator and clinical instructor. Sonia received a clinical faculty appointment to the UCSD School of Medicine, and founded the immensely successful Menopause Education Clinic in the Department of Reproductive Medicine.

“When we came here in 1961, there wasn’t much going on in La Jolla, and only a handful of professors on campus,” Sonia reminisced. “But we knew we were at the beginning of something special.”

Pictured with Bob, Sonia Hamburger founded the UCSD Menopause Education program in the Department of Reproductive Medicine.

In October 1963, San Diego Union arts columnist Alan Kriegsman wrote that he was sure the promised influx of UCSD students and faculty would “become a prime factor in the San Diego cultural scene.” Although there were UCSD-sponsored chamber music and orchestra performances held at various locations in the community and on the “lower campus” of Scripps Institution of Oceanography, Bob doesn’t remember classical music of any kind presented on the growing main campus. That changed in 1975 when John Stewart, founding provost of UCSD’s Muir College and soon to be leaving on sabbatical, asked Bob to step in and chair the committee that directed the spending of student funds for entertainment (a precursor to ArtPower!) in the newly-built Mandeville Center for the Arts.

Bob was thrilled to take charge. “I love research, and I also love classical music,” explained the Professor Emeritus who played piano and clarinet as a youngster. “While I was at Yale early in my academic career, we waited years to get tickets to the university’s quartet series at the famed Sproul Hall. It was almost as if someone had to die before you could get seats!”

THe UCSD School of Medicine in its early years.

Convinced that music offers a great balance to the sciences, he wanted to bring classical music to the new La Jolla campus. It wasn’t going to be easy. “Sonia and I have never had real money. Not in our lives, no inheritance, no family money. I couldn’t just reach in my pockets and do anything, although I adored quartet music,” said Bob.

But he had an idea. “A lot of doctors in town were on UCSD’s clinical faculty. So along with the few professors on campus, I wrote them all a personal letter to support good music on our campus, asking each for an $8 donation as a gesture of goodwill. I was able to raise just under $1,000, which was enough to bring the famous Cleveland Quartet to UCSD.”

Bob added, “That first concert was held April 1976 at the university’s Mandeville Auditorium. As I recall, there were hundreds of people, more turnout than ever seen for an event on campus.” Kriegsman’s prophecy rang true: UCSD filled the house, and this first concert—the beginning of a Chamber Music Series that has delighted concertgoers for more than three decades—was a hit.

“By the end of year one, I believe we had three quartet concerts,” Bob said. “When John came back from his sabbatical in 1976, he allocated additional student fees to support classical music, which was a great balance to the many rock and roll concerts.”

The Hamburgers’ love for chamber music was highlighted in 1996 when the couple, through a charitable remainder trust, created The Robert and Sonia Hamburger Family Chamber Music Series Endowment Fund. Their $20,000 gift established an endowment in perpetuity, and serves as encouragement for others to support the ArtPower! Chamber Music Series over the long term.

“No one asked that we give the money, we just felt that it was needed,” stated Bob. “There is a misconception that donors who gift endowments are only well-to-do people. We’re not millionaires. Fortunately, I had a patent that made a little money. I also made a good income as a professor. Everyone has been so thankful for the gift … and we are pleased by their support.”

Lee Talner, M.D., Professor Emeritus of Radiology at UC San Diego who served with Bob Hamburger on the chamber music committee, noted, “The series was very special to me because we regularly hosted the ensembles in homes of UCSD faculty, in which we almost always had post concert receptions, feeding the musicians and allowing supporters to participate in the afterglow of a fine performance. There is absolutely no doubt that it was Bob’s vision that evolved from a single concert in the first year into a world class series. Bob and Sonia’s generosity sets a fine example for others to follow.”

“Without the Hamburgers’ dedication and enthusiasm, this series would never have happened, and couldn’t have thrived as it has,” added Ruth Stern, M.D., a former UCSD faculty member who, with her husband Herbert, was also an early advisory committee member.

According to Bob, other advocates and supporters of what was originally called the “Faculty Chamber Series” included Sybil and Herbert York, founding Chancellor of UCSD; Sally and Norman Kroll; Wynnona and Ronald Goldman, M.D.; Marilyn and Charles Perrin; Carole and Stanley Mendoza, M.D.; Lynne and Thomas Peterson; Susan and Mehran Goulian, M.D.; Barbara and Norman Goldberg, M.D.; and Joan Mosher.  Also William Fitzgerald; Russell Ginns; Irwin and Joan Jacobs; Eleanor tum Suden; Aleck Karis; Rita and Richard Atkinson, President Emeritus of the University of California and former UC San Diego Chancellor; Walter Heiligenberg; Marianne McDonald; Joan and Richard O’Connor, M.D.; and Melvin Voigt, to name a few.

This year’s Chamber Music Series offers the audience an added treat: the Oct. 25 concert featuring the world-renown Emerson String Quartet (www.artpwr.com/events/260) will mark the series’ debut in the new, acoustically-superior Conrad Prebys Concert Hall on the campus of UC San Diego. The Department of Music facility was designed by Seattle-based LMN Architects in collaboration with world-renowned acoustician Cyril M. Harris.

“We are competing with other prestigious programs on campus and in the community,” said Sonia. “But the new concert hall—one of the finest in the world—is putting us on track to the big leagues. The Chamber Music Series is also a great means for community outreach. We have a great diversity of audiences from the campus as well as San Diego. People come to the concerts in flip flops and pumps, jeans and business suits, with designer handbags and backpacks.”

Talner noted, “The series has, from its inception, brought the best of international chamber ensembles to the UCSD campus. The chamber music committee always chose programs that introduced our audiences to 20th century music as well as the more traditional 19th century repertoire. The major limitation of the series was its venue, Mandeville Auditorium. I predict that the move to the new concert hall in the Music building will allow the program to thrive.”

“A kernel was started with the gift Sonia and I made,” said Bob, “and today it has matured into something wonderful.” Added Sonia, “Great music in a great concert hall on a great campus—beyond what we could have ever imagined.”

Ongoing private support is needed to sustain this valuable program. A gift to the ArtPower! Chamber Music Series Endowment Fund, founded by Sonia and Robert Hamburger, provides continuity and stability in turbulent times for our longest-running series. For more information, please visit www.artpower.ucsd.edu and click on “Giving”, or contact Development Director Kristine Breese at (858) 534-7657 or kbreese@ucsd.edu

Media Contact: Judy Piercey, 858-534-6128, jpiercey@ucsd.edu